Summary: The Sentier Research monthly median household income data series is now available for December. The nominal median household income was up $537 month-over-month and $2,072 year-over-year. That's a 1.0% MoM gain and a 4.0% YoY gain. Adjusted for inflation, the numbers were up $738 MoM and $1725 YoY. The real numbers equate to a 1.4% MoM increase and a 3.3% YoY increase, thanks to -0.37% drop in the Consumer Price Index.

In real dollar terms, the median annual income is 5.1% lower ($2,900) than its interim high in January 2008 but well off its low in August 2011.

Background on Sentier Research

The traditional source of household income data is the Census Bureau, which publishes annual household income data in mid-September for the previous year.

Sentier Research, an organization that focuses on income and demographics, offers a more up-to-date glimpse of household incomes by accessing the Census Bureau data and publishing monthly updates. Sentier Research has now released its most recent . . . .

In the end, Binyamin Netanyahu sidestepped the nuclear option and did what he does so well: scared American politicians to death.

The White House had warned the Israeli prime minister off trying to wreck western negotiations with Iran by revealing inside details of the deal being hammered out over Tehran’s atomic programme. Netanyahu’s aides had darkly hinted that he would do it anyway.

But his highly divisive speech to Congress – boycotted by close to 60 Democratic members who objected to a foreign leader using the Capitol as a re-election platform and pulpit to bully the American president – merely regurgitated information that Netanyahu himself said is easily found on Google.

The Israeli prime minister was received like a president about to give the State of the Union. Netanyahu glad-handed members of Congress who crowded in around him as he worked his way down the aisle toward the podium.

He stopped to wave at the gallery where his wife sat next to Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and writer.

But the triumphant mood swiftly changed as he began to speak. Netanyahu railed against a “bad deal” he said would allow Iran to build as many nuclear bombs as it wants in a decade, if it waits that long.

In the meantime he said, Iran is “gobbling up” countries across the Middle East. Four to date. He dragged in references to the Nazis and an ancient Persian potentate who wanted to wipe out the Jews as he painted a vision of a “potential nuclear nightmare”.

“The days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over,” he thundered.

But Netanyahu was short on the substance of what to do about it other than to oppose the deal that appears to be shaping up.

The White House reaction summed up the speech: all rhetoric, no new ideas, no action.

The Obama administration’s swift putdown was as clear a signal as any that the already poisonous relationship between the Israeli prime minister and the president of the Jewish state’s most important ally is not going to get any easier.

Netanyahu tried to paint the furore over his address to Congress two weeks before the Israeli general election, and arranged behind the White House’s back, as a baffling misunderstanding.

“I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as political. That was never my intention,” he said.

His speech said otherwise. It was evidently aimed at the electors back home and the president’s opponents in Congress.

Netanyahu buttered up his audience with plenty of references to all that the US has done for Israel, including praise for Obama – although he thanked the president for helping out with a forest fire and Congress for funding the “iron dome” anti-missile shield.

But his central message was that Obama was not to be trusted with the security of Israel. That rang true with those Republicans who think the president cannot be trusted with the security of the US, and has actually endangered it.

Netanyahu said that the deal under negotiation “would all but guarantee Iran gets nuclear weapons”. He warned about Iran’s short “breakout time” to build an atomic bomb although he has been waving the same timetable for so many years now that if it were accurate Tehran should have a whole stockpile of nuclear missiles.

“Iran has proven time and again that it cannot be trusted. It leaves Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure,” he said. “That’s why this deal is so bad. It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb. It paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

“This is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We’re better off without it.”

But Netanyahu did not offer any alternative solutions other than endless sanctions against Iran until it meets a series of vague demands to “stop aggression against its neighbours”, stop “supporting terrorism around the world and stop threatening to annihilate ... the only Jewish state”. The last demand got a loud standing ovation.

Netanyahu’s most immediate concern is whether what was a classic Likud party political broadcast – the party of Ariel Sharon always did well when the voters were scared – was enough to get him re-elected in a fortnight in a tight race against a centre left coalition.

The Israeli prime minister will also be waiting to see if his speech scared up enough votes in Congress to override a presidential veto of legislation strengthening sanctions against Iran if it failed to sign an agreement or signed one and breached it. Obama has warned that the legislation could kill the talks.

The only thing the speech has done for sure is to perpetuate the deep breach in trust between the US and Israeli leaders.

But Netanyahu managed to achieve something else. He made the mistake of forcing Democratic members of Congress to choose between Israel and their president.

Scores boycotted. Others attended the speech reluctantly, fearful of the political consequences of upsetting the pro-Israel lobby.

That has to an extent liberated some in Congress from the old yoke that tied support of Israel to support of its government’s policies. They’re now separating the two and even toying with the idea that criticism of Netanyahu’s policies – not least his determination to keep the occupation of the Palestinian territories rolling on – is actually the pro-Israel position.

The White House is sure to exploit it.

The damage is not necessarily permanent. Relations would be improved overnight if Israeli voters dump their prime minister. If not, Netanyahu’s rhetoric is only likely to get more scary.

Robert Fisk commented in The Independent on Monday, “… the prime minister of Israel knows he can get away with anything in America — with the same confidence that he can support his army when they slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza in the ‘self-defense’ of Israel.”Noting that Netanyahu is considerably more popular on Capitol Hill than Obama, Fisk adds: “It’s a pity Bibi wasn’t born in New York. Then we could have US President Netanyahu — and stop pretending there’s any difference between the Israeli and American governments.”

Zionists are a minority within a minority, They make up less than 1% of the US population. Latin Americans make up almost 17%.

The Zionists come with an umbilical cord attached to a foreign nation. The Republicans are fine with that and want the US part of that cord. They want American blood and money to feed the cord.

The Republicans get incensed when the Latin Americans, that actually have actual ancient blood ties to the US fly a Mexican flag. Latin Americans die for the US. Americans die in wars stirred up by the Zionists.

Republicans are incensed when Latin Americans attend US schools. The Republicans are silent when the Zionist destroy schools in Gaza.

Something is wrong, seriously wrong.

There is a populism growing in US politics. That populism will include blacks, Latins, working class Americans and millennials. the Republican party will not survive. Good.

There was a lot of bullshit, nonsense, and flat-out lies in what Netanyahu said today.

And, afterwards, Barack Obama made a quiet, and, quite sensible argument for the value of having a deal - a deal with inspections and verification.

He pointed out that, contrary to what Netanyahu said would happen, Iran, today, has less nuclear arms potential than it did a year ago when the initial agreement was reached. Basically, he said, Bibi was wrong Then, just as he's wrong, now.

Americans are having their eyes opened by the increasing enrollment in Obamacare. Those getting the care are relieved and their friends and families are supportive. The Republicans are losing support faster than they realize.

Iran’s direct support for an Iraqi push to dislodge the Islamic State group from the northern city of Tikrit could turn out to be “a positive thing” if it does not inflame sectarian tensions, the top U.S. general said Tuesday.

The statement by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reflected the delicate balance Washington is trying to strike between limiting Iranian influence and allowing Iraqi leaders to determine their own path to defeating the Islamic State.

U.S. officials have said Iraq did not ask the U.S. to provide air support for the Tikrit offensive, even though the U.S.-led military coalition has been conducting airstrikes in much of Iraq since August and has deployed hundreds of U.S. soldiers to try to regenerate an Iraqi army that collapsed last June.

Dempsey said Iran and its proxies have been operating inside Iraq since 2004, but the Tikrit campaign signals a new level of involvement.

"This is the most overt conduct of Iranian support, in the form of artillery and other things," Dempsey said in response to questions from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Frankly, it will only be a problem if it results in sectarianism."

He said that about two-thirds of the force seeking to retake Tikrit is comprised of Iranian-based Shiite militia fighters. Iraqi government troops make up the other third. Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is a predominantly Sunni city.

"If they perform in a credible way" and rid Tikrit of Islamic State control, "then it will, in the main, have been a positive thing in terms of the counter-ISIL campaign," Dempsey said.

Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. general overseeing the military coalition fighting in Iraq told a House panel that the campaign has killed more than 8,500 Islamic State fighters since its bombing campaign began in August.

Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said the Islamic State, which has controlled key parts of northern and western Iraq since last summer, is no longer capable of seizing and holding new territory.

"He has assumed a defensive crouch in Iraq," Austin told the House Armed Services Committee.

In late January, after other American officials were quoted in news reports as estimating that 6,000 Islamic State fighters had been killed, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who fought in the Vietnam war as an enlisted soldier, said it was clear that thousands had been killed but he refused to endorse any specific body count. "I was in a war where there were a lot of body counts every day, and we lost that war," he said.

Austin said that in addition to killing at least 8,500 Islamic State fighters, the U.S.-led bombing has destroyed "hundreds" of the group's vehicles, tanks and heavy weapons. The bombing also has degraded the group's ability to generate revenue by striking oil refineries and crude oil collection sites, particularly in neighboring Syria.

"The fact is that he can no longer do what he did at the outset, which is to seize and to hold new territory," Austin said.

Austin made the remarks in his prepared statement at a hearing on President Barack Obama's request for new legal authority to execute the military campaign against the Islamic State. Austin is a former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

The reigning strategy of the Israelis for some time has been that chaos in the region is a good thing. Division, disharmony, and weakness among neighbors means that they’re distracted elsewhere and so their “threat” to Israel is lessened. Chaos in the region also helps to keep ordinary Israelis preoccupied with potential external problems rather than internal ones like rising costs of living, a housing crunch, the Palestinian problem, etc.Until Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS turn their attention to Israel, the politicians and the IDF are quite happy to let them weaken the Assad regime. Likewise, Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS are busy consolidating their position in the region and do not want to throw their own survival into question by inviting Israeli retaliation. Hizb Allah is already established in S. Lebanon and the Bekaa and so could stand to be “weakened” through Israeli attacks.Of course, this detente feeds into conspiracy theories about ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra as Israeli proxies. But you don’t have to look for conspiracies to make sense of what’s happening. Unfortunately, the current situation is simply part of the Israelis’ long-term but short-sighted strategy.The Israeli gov’t. and much of the citizenry no longer even imagine the possibility of a peaceful co-existence with stable Arab neighbors. The casual, everyday racism of many Israelis towards Arabs is a dead giveaway that we’re well past the stage when anything but a siege mentality in the face of real and perceived threats makes sense to them.In some ways, the bigger threat that Iran poses to Israel is its interest in the stability of its neighbors as currently constituted. Turkey and the GCC want stability (and ISIS and al-Qaeda neutralized) too but only after the political reconfiguration of the region. And people wonder why current US regional policy is so schizophrenic! When your “allies” are ginning up war and your “enemies” are trying to tamp down the flames, it’s hard to formulate a consistent policy.

I don't know if this website is a little "fanboyish," or not, but this is their latest on Tikrit:

The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham’s (ISIS) defenses in the city of Tikirt are quickly falling apart, as the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and their allies continue to advance towards the remaining areas controlled by the former; thus, resulting in the imminent encirclement of these enemy combatants.

On Tuesday morning, the ISF – in cooperation with local tribes and militias – captured the strategic oil fields of Alas and ‘Ajeel in eastern Tikrit after the ISIS militants were relentlessly bombarded by a barrage of artillery shells and gunfire from the east.

Due to their withdrawal from the Alas and ‘Ajeel Oil Fields, ISIS was forced to withdraw towards one of their last strongholds at the town of Al-‘Alam; this will be the town where ISIS will prepare their last stand against the ISF and their allies.

Continuing their successful offensive, the ISF took complete control of the highway between Tuz Khumato and Tikrit, raising the Iraqi flag at the Police Headquarters in the town of Ksayba following their fierce clashes with the enemy combatants from ISIS.

East of Tikrit, the ISF and their allies captured the Hamrin Mountains (Jabal Hamrin), killing a number of militants in the process. According to Iraqi media source Haidar Sumeri, four suicide bombers were killed during the battle, including a female identified among the dead militants at Hamrin Mountains.

According to the military commander of Salahiddeen, over 50 ISIS militants were killed while attempting to withdraw to nearby Baiji; this took place in conjunction with the ISF entering the town of Al-Zuhour.

The Mideast policy emanating from Washington is based on ignorance regarding the causes of the conflict, history of the region, and religious motivations causing the violence. Obama refuses to acknowledge that the U.S. is engaged in a war against a totalitarian Islamic enemy and a fight for freedom worldwide. More

Netanyahu exposes madness of a bad deal with Iran in speech to Congress March 3, 2015

A brilliant speech that will make it hard for Obama to sell his potential agreement with Iran to Congress. More

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.